29th June 2007 Archive

Capex investment on pre-4G wireless systems will reach a cumulative total of $13bn by 2012 if new spectrum allocations, and technology roll-outs, stay on schedule. The main systems attracting this global spend will be 802.16e and its successor 802.16m, and LTE. However, while the latter will see a strong uptick in growth from the turn of the decade, it will not overtake WiMAX in capex terms until 2014.

Boy oh boy! - has Andrew Keen upset the world of Web 2.0. I'm tempted to tell him: "Things change. Deal with it." but instead, I'm going to suggest you watch a talking rabbit discuss the end of the world and American culture.

Finding the hard drive in your DVR no longer capacious enough for all the digital TV programmes you want to record? If you don't fancy transplanting in a new drive, Western Digital may have the answer: an external HDD for DVRs.

The move towards rich internet applications (RIA) seems to be unstoppable. Aiming to offer browser-based applications with the speed, flexibility and functionality of traditional desktop applications, companies like Google and others continue to raise the bar as to what you can do in a browser. One of the key technologies in this area has been Ajax, but even with the proliferation of Ajax toolkits and frameworks, there are an increasing range of alternatives. These include JavaFX from Sun, JBoss Seam, Google’s GWT and Microsoft’s Silverlight.

Apple's iPhone goes on sale in the US this evening. The queues have formed, and limits placed on how many of the handsets punters can take away with them. What is all the fuss about? Find out by reading Register Hardware's most popular iPhone stories...

Internet phone service specialist EQO has added BlackBerry to the list of around 400 handsets that it says can now make local-rate or free international calls - without using Wi-Fi or VOIP to the handset. Users also get cheap text messaging and free access to all the popular IM services, the company said.

UK telecommunications operator O2 will aim to break the mobile phone handset upgrade cycle with a new selection of tariffs that will be cheaper than the pay-as-you-talk and monthly contract offerings currently available.

Why are people "moving" their FON routers into the lake? It's because of a clever idea - or so it seemed: let people "earn" 15 minutes of free Internet time on the FON Wi-Fi network by watching adverts.

Ever more capacious computer hard drives encourage us to stuff more and more content on them, which means backing it all up can prove to be a pain. And what if you have more than one computer in your household? Enter the ZyXel NSA-2400, a single, shareable repository for all your data storage needs.

Scientists have a better understanding of the role black holes have played in the evolution of galaxies in our cosmos, thanks to a new and unprecedentedly detailed simulation of the universe developed by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University.

3Com has decided to fight the hysteria over WiFi in schools. The company has hooked up with a reseller that specialises in the education market called 802.UK to promote "second-generation wireless" - by which it means enterprise-class managed WLANs - for schools.

Convicted cyberstalker Felicity Jane Lowde has been sentenced to six months in chokey for her "vicious, vitriolic and vindictive" campaign of harassment against Rachel North, a survivor of the July 2005 London bombings. Her sentence was handed down at Thames Magistrate Court yesterday, along with an anti social behaviour order (ASBO) and is the maximum jail term the judge could impose.

A new 3G (European) version of the iPhone will be launched Monday in the UK by Apple - in a joint promotion with Vodafone, T-Mobile of Germany, and Carphone Warehouse. It should answer the disappointment with the US version of the iPhone which has been widely slammed for its poor performance as a phone.

[David Norfolk says: I don't like most surveys I see – they're normally from the armed and dangerous wing of the PR industry – but they can be useful, when done properly. So I was interested when Richard Collins (he wrote a piece for Reg Dev on test-driven development here earlier this year) pointed me at this piece from one of his staff – and I thought it was worth sharing with our readers – , Editor]

Police and securocrats know that there aren't enough real terrorists in the world, which is why they have to keep manufacturing them. This is because citizens tire of being watched by cameras, frisked and x-rayed, having their belongings searched, giving fingerprints to so-called friendly nations on entry, contemplating the myriad government databases where their details and activities are preserved, and wondering if some dour little bureaucrat is reading their email or listening to them on the phone.

Science, smarts and children seem to dominate this week. We hope you all had the smarts to avoid the following occupations. Noted science red-top Popular Science has published a list of the ten worst jobs in science. "Microsoft Security Grunt" made number five, but you had your own suggestions:

Dell, the green movement's most recent recruit, is trumpeting yet another be-kind-to-the-environment initiative. This time it's mobile workstations and notebooks that have been greenwashed, with the firm's latest launches, the Dell D430 Notebook and the Dell Precision M4300 mobile workstation earning the Environmental Protection Agency's newest Energy Star 4.0 badge.

You’ll never use MapQuest again. With a new addition to its Google Maps service, Google has completely reinvented the notion of online driving directions, letting you adjust routes with a simple drag and drop.

It's only a matter of time before Google unveils a full-fledged online operating system. This week, Microsoft's biggest rival rolled out a new version of Docs & Spreadsheets - its online answer to Word and Excel - adding Windows-like folders, an improved search engine, and an all-around prettier interface.